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Product Description
Product Description
It was they year of Desert Storm that Harvey Pekar and his wife, Joyce Brabner, discovered Harvey had cancer. Pekar, a man who has made a profession of chronicling the Kafkaesque absurdities of an ordinary life (if any life is ordinary) suddenly found himself incapacitated. But he had a better-than-average chance to beat cancer and he took it kicking, screaming, and complaining all the way. Pekar and Brabner draw on this and other trials to paint a portrait of a man beset with fears real and imagined who survives.
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THIS IS A STORY ABOUT A YEAR WHEN SOMEONE WAS SICK, ABOUT A TIME WHEN IT SEEMED THAT THE REST OF THE WORLD WAS SICK, TOO. Read the first page
Front Cover | Copyright | Excerpt | Back Cover
THIS IS A STORY ABOUT A YEAR WHEN SOMEONE WAS SICK, ABOUT A TIME WHEN IT SEEMED THAT THE REST OF THE WORLD WAS SICK, TOO. Read the first page
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
Format:Paperback
Harvey Pekar had been writing an autobiographical comic book called American Splendor since 1976. His wife Joyce is also a writer and this is the story of their battle with cancer.
There is something about a true story. Some compelling force that draws you in deep in ways fiction finds hard to do. This work has many strengths, all of which combine to blend into an almost perfect narrative.
This tale is more of an overheard conversation or a retelling of a memory. It isn't a highly polished chronology but a meandering of two people's collective experience. Just as life rarely arrives one challenge at a time this book presents a broad picture of all the events that were occurring around them from moving house to the gulf war. This collage approach serves to flesh out what could easily become a list of medical procedures.
The account is a combined effort with both husband and wife taking up the thread just like a real conversation. It is mostly a depiction, or recollection, of snatches of real-time events linked by frequent narration. It is very dialogue heavy and could work as a traditional paperback even with the disjointed telling. It is more of an illustrated story than fully fledged comic book but there are some solely visual touches.
The art is basic black and white and has a very home-grown feel to it. It does look like it has been done with a couple of black pens and photocopied. There are even traces of the straight lines for the lettering. This is definitely an asset as the level of authenticity and truth that this basic style imparts is beyond measure.
This is a personal and intimate story of two people that love each other and the trials and tribulations they face together. It is quite frank and there are probably things in here that you would choose to leave out if it were your story. It is harrowing and affecting but without becoming bleak or trite. You are never without hope and never forget this is about real people and that you are privileged to share something so intimate. Thumbs Up!
There is something about a true story. Some compelling force that draws you in deep in ways fiction finds hard to do. This work has many strengths, all of which combine to blend into an almost perfect narrative.
This tale is more of an overheard conversation or a retelling of a memory. It isn't a highly polished chronology but a meandering of two people's collective experience. Just as life rarely arrives one challenge at a time this book presents a broad picture of all the events that were occurring around them from moving house to the gulf war. This collage approach serves to flesh out what could easily become a list of medical procedures.
The account is a combined effort with both husband and wife taking up the thread just like a real conversation. It is mostly a depiction, or recollection, of snatches of real-time events linked by frequent narration. It is very dialogue heavy and could work as a traditional paperback even with the disjointed telling. It is more of an illustrated story than fully fledged comic book but there are some solely visual touches.
The art is basic black and white and has a very home-grown feel to it. It does look like it has been done with a couple of black pens and photocopied. There are even traces of the straight lines for the lettering. This is definitely an asset as the level of authenticity and truth that this basic style imparts is beyond measure.
This is a personal and intimate story of two people that love each other and the trials and tribulations they face together. It is quite frank and there are probably things in here that you would choose to leave out if it were your story. It is harrowing and affecting but without becoming bleak or trite. You are never without hope and never forget this is about real people and that you are privileged to share something so intimate. Thumbs Up!
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
18 reviews
19 of 19 people found the following review helpful
Fine Work
22 Oct 2001
Format:Paperback
A fine work of autobiography. Understand, however, that Harvey is critical of everything, himself included, and his unflinching eye depicts his personal agony alongside the state-of-the-world at the time. As in many of his extended works, Harvey uses his story to get up on a soap-box, but if you think of his comics as an extension of his life, you might be begining to appreciate what he really is. Harvey IS his stories.
I was struck by the relationship between Harvey and his wife Joyce: if there is a better depiction of the difficulty in love in the midst of illness, I don't know it. Their relationship is loving and it touched me deeply.
12 of 12 people found the following review helpful
Learn to read the art as well
2 Sep 2003
Format:Paperback
It's very important to emphasize here that Frank Stack's artwork is not "sloppy" or "crude" in any sense. He and Bill Griffith probably have the strongest straight-art chops of anybody doing comics now. But Stack isn't just technically accomplished. Once you learn to follow his deceptively simple lines, he's profoundly expressive in his impressionist manner. Especially dealing with the tough stuff in this story, he finds the exact unsentimental tone. If he was a more prolific storyteller (or had just a bit more vivid sense of humor) his work would be mentioned right with Griffith, Crumb, Sheldon, Williams, Woodring -- the likes of those. Barbner and Pekar's single finest stroke may have been choose Stack to do the art for "Our Cancer Year."
10 of 10 people found the following review helpful
For Pekar fans and people struggling with illness
7 Jun 1999
Format:Paperback
I found this book interesting since I'm a fan of Pekar's American Splendor series and his appearances on David Letterman's shows (apparently at an end, unfortunately for Pekar, even more unfortunately for Letterman). This book's an in depth look at Pekar's struggle with lymphoma. Given the subject matter, it's probably no surprise that this isn't as amusing as the American Splendor anthologies. But for fans, or for people struggling with illness, it's probably a worthwhile read.
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